JPH0513403A - Spraying device for chemical solution wet treatment vessel - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To enhance the preciseness of a substrate by uniformly applying chemical liquid reaction on the whole surface of the substrate, to miniaturize the title spraying device, and to contrive improvement in safety of the substrate to be conveyed. CONSTITUTION:A chemical agent spraying device 13 is provided with a rotatable conveyor roller 4 with which a substrate 3 of LDC and the like is conveyed, a driving motor 15 with which the conveyor roller 4 is rotated at a low speed, and a high flow speed nozzle 16 which is arranged inclining in the direction of conveyance of the substrate 3 and sprays a chemical 6 on the whole surface of the substrate 3 by one projection.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a chemical solution spraying apparatus for spraying a predetermined chemical solution onto a substrate in a wet processing tank for performing a wet process such as an etching process and a developing process on a substrate such as LCD. It is an improvement of the simplification of the device.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Generally, in a substrate manufacturing process for manufacturing a substrate such as an LCD or the like, a wet processing bath for performing a wet processing such as an etching processing and a development processing on a substrate is incorporated. The wet processing tank is provided with a chemical solution spraying device for spraying a predetermined chemical solution such as a developing solution onto the substrate.

FIG. 3 is a conceptual diagram showing the structure of a chemical spraying device in a wet processing tank. In the figure, a chemical liquid spraying device 1 is a device for spraying a predetermined chemical liquid 6 onto a substrate 3, which is provided inside a hollow rectangular parallelepiped wet processing tank 2, and a rotatable transport roller 4 for transporting the substrate 3, A drive motor 5 that supplies a rotational force to the transport roller 4 and a shower unit 7 that sprays the chemical liquid 6 onto the substrate 3 are provided.

The wet processing bath 2 is formed with an inlet portion 2a and an outlet portion 2b of a substrate 3 to be transported, and the transport rollers 4 are arranged at regular intervals from the inlet portion 2a to the outlet portion 2b. It is set up. The shower unit 7 is disposed above the transport roller 4 in parallel with the transport roller 4.

The carrier roller 4 supports the substrate 3 from below,
Rotational force is supplied from the drive motor 5 to rotate the substrate, and the substrate 3 is continuously conveyed rightward in the drawing. Also, the shower unit 7 is
It is composed of a pipe 7a to which the chemical liquid 6 is supplied and a plurality of shower ports 7b opened in the longitudinal direction of the pipe 7a,
The chemical solution 6 is sprayed on the substrate 3 from the shower port 7b.

The chemical solution 6 is evenly distributed over the entire surface of the substrate 3.
The length of the shower unit 7 is set to be considerably long because of the necessity of spraying, and the transport speed of the transport roller 4 determined by the drive motor 5 is set to a relatively low speed.

By the way, the chemical solution 6 usually starts a predetermined reaction immediately from the sprayed portion. In such a chemical liquid spraying device for spraying the chemical liquid 6, when the substrate 3 passes through the wet processing bath 2 at a low speed, the following problems occur. That is, as shown in FIG. 3, in the vicinity of the inlet portion 2a of the wet processing bath 2, the front end portion 3a of the substrate 3 to which the chemical liquid 6 is first sprayed starts the reaction quickly, and the substrate to which the chemical liquid 6 is sprayed lastly. The rear end portion 3b of 3 has the latest reaction start. That is, the timing of starting the reaction by the chemical liquid 6 changes stepwise along the transfer direction of the substrate 3, and accordingly, reaction unevenness along the substrate transfer direction occurs on the substrate 3.

A substrate in which such reaction unevenness has occurred becomes a defective product, and the accuracy of the substrate manufactured in the substrate manufacturing process is lowered. Recently, the size of the substrate tends to be large, and the above-mentioned deviation of the reaction start timing due to the chemical solution on the same substrate is becoming more and more urgent.

Therefore, there has been proposed a chemical solution spraying device which minimizes a time lag between the front end portion and the rear end portion of a substrate entering the wet processing tank near the entrance of the wet processing tank. Such a conventional example is shown in FIG. The feature of the chemical liquid spraying device 8 shown is that the inlet portion 2 of the wet processing tank 2 is
a first drive motor 10 that supplies a rotational force to some of the transport rollers 9 near a and is capable of switching the drive force;
A second drive motor 12 that supplies a rotational force to the transport rollers 11 other than the transport roller 9 is installed.

The first drive motor 10 supplies a high-speed rotational force to the transport roller 9 when the substrate 3 reaches the inlet 2a of the wet processing bath 2. Then, when the entire substrate 3 is loaded into the wet processing bath 2, the driving force is switched so as to supply a relatively low speed rotational force to the transport roller 9. The rotation speed of the conveyance roller 9 at this low speed is set to be equal to the rotation speed of the conveyance roller 11 rotated by the second drive motor 12.

When the entire substrate 3 is loaded into the wet processing bath 2, the driving force of the first drive motor 10 is switched,
The transport roller 9 rotates at a low speed together with the transport roller 11. Therefore, the substrate 3 is transported at a low speed in the wet processing bath 2, and the chemical solution 6 is evenly dispersed on the substrate 3.

Further, when the transport roller 11 transports the substrate 3, if a new substrate 3 comes across the inlet portion 2a of the wet processing bath 2, the first drive motor 10 switches the drive force again and transports it. By supplying a high-speed rotational force to the roller 9, the transport roller 9 puts a new substrate 3 into the wet processing bath 2 at a high speed.

According to the chemical liquid spraying device 8 as described above, the substrate 3 can be carried into the wet processing bath 2 at a high speed by the transport roller 9 rotating at a high speed by the drive motor 10. Therefore, the time lag when the front end portion 3a and the rear end portion 3b of the substrate 3 enter the wet processing bath 2 is extremely small, and the entire substrate 3 is positioned below the shower unit 7 almost at the same time.
The chemical solution 6 can be simultaneously sprayed on the entire surface of the substrate 3.

Therefore, there is no deviation in the timing of the reaction start by the chemical liquid 6 on the substrate 3, the distribution performance of the chemical liquid 6 to be sprayed is improved, and the reaction unevenness on the substrate 3 does not occur.
Thereby, the precision of the manufactured substrate can be improved.

Although the chemical spraying device 8 has two drive sources, that is, the drive motors 10 and 12, the substrate 3 has the wet processing bath 2 even if there is only one drive source.
It has a driving force switching mechanism that rotates the transport roller at a high speed when it reaches the entrance 2a of the substrate and rotates the transport roller at a low speed when the entire substrate enters the wet processing bath. If so, the same effect as that of the chemical liquid spraying device 8 can be expected.

[0016]

However, the conventional example having the two driving sources or the driving force switching mechanism as described above has a problem that the apparatus becomes complicated and large-sized. In addition, when the transfer roller near the inlet of the wet processing tank is rotated at a high speed to transfer the substrate at a high speed, the inertia of the transferred substrate becomes strong, and there is a risk of colliding with a substrate positioned in front and damaging it. Therefore, there is a problem that the safety of the substrate to be transported is low.

The chemical spraying device for a wet processing tank of the present invention has been proposed in order to solve the above problems, and its purpose is to obtain a substrate precision manufactured by uniformly performing a chemical reaction on the entire surface of the substrate. It is an object of the present invention to provide a chemical liquid spraying device for a wet processing tank, which is easy to downsize and has high safety of a substrate to be transported.

[0018]

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, the chemical liquid spraying apparatus for a wet processing tank of the present invention is LC
A rotatable transport roller for transporting a substrate such as D, a drive motor for supplying a rotational force to the transport roller, and a tilted arrangement in the substrate transport direction, so that the chemical solution is sprayed over the entire surface of the substrate by one shot. It is characterized in that it is provided with a high flow rate nozzle for injecting a chemical liquid at high speed.

[0019]

In the present invention having the above-described structure, the transfer roller supports the substrate from below and is rotated by being supplied with the rotational force from the drive motor to transfer the substrate into the wet processing bath. The high-velocity nozzle jets the chemical liquid at high speed onto the substrate transported into the wet processing bath. Since the high-velocity nozzle is arranged so as to be inclined with respect to the substrate, the chemical solution ejected from the high-velocity nozzle can be uniformly and simultaneously sprayed over the entire surface of the substrate by one ejection.

Therefore, in the case of spraying the chemical solution in which the reaction starts immediately from the sprayed portion, the chemical solution reactions occur simultaneously on the entire surface of the substrate, and the reaction unevenness does not occur on the substrate.

[0021]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Next, one embodiment of the chemical liquid spraying device for a wet processing tank of the present invention will be described with reference to FIGS. 1 and 2. FIG. 1 is a conceptual diagram showing the configuration of the present embodiment, and FIG. 2 is a perspective view of the essential parts of the present embodiment. The same members as those in the conventional example shown in FIG. 3 are designated by the same reference numerals, and the description thereof will be omitted.

The chemical liquid spraying device 13 of this embodiment is provided in the wet processing tank 21, and has a high flow rate nozzle 16 for spraying the chemical liquid 6 at a high speed so as to spray the chemical liquid 6 on the entire surface of the substrate 3 by one shot. Is a feature of the configuration.

The high-velocity nozzle 16 has a width dimension similar to that of the substrate 3 and is arranged above the transport roller 4. Further, the high-velocity nozzle 16 has its tip end facing the inlet 2 a side of the wet processing bath 2 and is arranged so as to be inclined in the substrate 3 transport direction. The length of the wet processing bath 21 from the inlet 21a to the outlet 21b is set to be slightly longer than the length of the substrate 3.
The high flow velocity nozzle 16 is arranged above the outlet 21b of the wet processing bath 21.

In the present embodiment having the above-mentioned structure, the driving motor 5 supplies the rotational force to the conveying roller 4 so that the conveying roller 4 is rotated at a low speed. Is transported at low speed. When the front end portion 3a of the conveyed substrate 3 reaches the position below the high flow rate nozzle 16, the high flow rate nozzle 16 sprays the chemical liquid 6 once. At this time, since the high-velocity nozzle 16 has the same width dimension as the width dimension of the substrate 3, the chemical liquid 6 is sprayed over the entire width dimension of the front end portion 3 a of the substrate 3.

Further, since the high-velocity nozzle 16 is disposed so as to be opposed to the substrate 3 in the conveying direction, the chemical solution 6 smoothly flows from the front end portion 3a to the rear end portion 3b of the substrate 3.
At this time, the chemical liquid 6 jetted from the high-velocity nozzle 16 is
From the front end 3a to the rear end 3b of the substrate 3 in about 0.5 to 1 second
The chemical solution 6 is spread evenly over the entire surface of the substrate 3 and sprayed over the entire surface of the substrate 3.

According to the chemical liquid spraying device 13 as described above,
The high-velocity nozzle 16 can evenly spray the chemical liquid 6 over the entire surface of the substrate 3 by one shot, and therefore the reaction start timing by the chemical liquid 6 does not shift on the substrate 3. Therefore, the chemical reaction occurs almost simultaneously on the entire surface of the substrate 3, and the reaction unevenness on the substrate 3 can be prevented. Thereby, the reaction by the chemical liquid 6 can be uniformly applied to the entire surface of the substrate 3, and the accuracy of the substrate 3 manufactured in the substrate manufacturing process can be improved.

The drive source of the chemical liquid spraying device 13 of this embodiment is only the drive motor 51 for rotating the conveying roller 4 at a low speed. Therefore, it is not necessary to provide two driving sources or a driving force switching mechanism, the configuration of the device can be simplified, and the size can be easily reduced.

Furthermore, since the transport roller 4 transports the substrate 3 at a low speed by the drive motor 5, the inertia with respect to the transported substrate 3 is weak, and an accident such as a collision with the substrate 3 located in front and damage is caused. In addition, the safety of the substrate 3 is high.
Moreover, according to the present embodiment, the high velocity nozzles 16 to 1
Since the chemical solution 6 can be sprayed over the entire substrate 3 only by ejecting the chemical solution 6 once, the length dimension of the wet processing bath 21 is
It suffices if the substrate 3 has a length that allows it to be completely stored.
Therefore, the size of the device can be greatly reduced, and the size of the substrate manufacturing process can be reduced.

At the same time as the apparatus is downsized, the transport roller 4
Since the number of installed devices can be reduced, the manufacturing cost of the device can be suppressed, which is economically advantageous. The chemical liquid spraying device for the wet processing tank of the present invention is not limited to the above embodiment, and the tip of the high-velocity nozzle may face the outlet side of the wet processing tank. The inclination angle of the high flow rate nozzle with respect to the substrate transport direction can also be changed appropriately.

[0030]

As described above, according to the chemical spraying device of the wet processing tank of the present invention, the high-velocity nozzle for spraying the chemical at a high speed so as to spray the chemical on the entire surface of the substrate by one shot, Due to the extremely simple structure of arranging it obliquely with respect to the substrate transport direction, the high-velocity nozzle can spray the chemical solution evenly over the entire surface of the substrate with one shot, so that the reaction by the chemical solution can be spread over the entire surface of the substrate. It can be applied uniformly, and the precision of the substrate manufactured in the substrate manufacturing process can be improved.

Further, according to the present invention, since only one drive motor for rotating the conveying roller at a low speed is provided as a drive source, downsizing is easy, and excellent safety for the conveyed substrate is ensured. Can be secured.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a conceptual diagram showing a configuration of an embodiment of a chemical spraying device for a wet processing tank of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a perspective view of a main part of this embodiment.

FIG. 3 is a conceptual diagram showing the configuration of a conventional chemical spraying device for a wet processing tank.

FIG. 4 is a conceptual diagram showing the configuration of a conventional chemical spraying device for a wet processing tank.

[Explanation of symbols]

 3 Substrate 4 Conveyor Roller 5 Drive Motor 6 Chemical Solution 13 Chemical Solution Dispersing Device 16 High Flow Nozzle 21 Wet Processing Tank

Claims (1)

Claim: What is claimed is: 1. A chemical solution spraying apparatus for spraying a predetermined chemical solution onto a substrate such as an LCD in a wet processing tank for performing etching processing, developing processing, etc. on the substrate, and a rotation for transporting the substrate. A possible transport roller, a drive motor that supplies a rotational force to the transport roller, and an inclined drive circuit in the substrate transport direction, which sprays the chemical solution at a high speed so as to spray the chemical solution over the entire surface in one shot. A chemical spraying device for a wet processing tank, which is equipped with a flow velocity nozzle.